It’s exciting to see a kid at a rehearsal meeting with someone who seems like such an icon.
For me to rehearse with a children’s orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.
It was so boring, and ‘Dragonheart’ was so unchallenging – there was no research involved or any rehearsal. So I was in my hotel room every night with no English-language TV except ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ at 10 o’clock every night.
If I’m having a bad day in rehearsal, I’ll sleep with my script.
Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I’ve never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn’t take advantage of a rehearsal process.
A first kiss is hard to fake on screen. It’s tempting to practice before you shoot, but why blow that natural awkwardness on a rehearsal? There’s something so beautiful about it that can’t be faked.
I demanded two weeks of rehearsal because to me as an actor, that’s the most important time.
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
When you’re reinterpreting the same material eight shows a week, it’s impossible to lock in the ‘ideal’ performance. Things that felt great in previews can feel forced three months in; jokes that got big laughs in the rehearsal room may suddenly fall flat in front of a paying audience.
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
All the real work is done in the rehearsal period.
People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don’t.
The rehearsal process is the biggest gift you can give to the director and to yourself as an actor because it allows you to shape the character and the scenes.
Well, any time I’m preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, it’s as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.
The focus of our family life was homework and what was for dinner; getting to ballet rehearsal and getting my brother to soccer.
I started doing the big Hollywood stuff, and I realised, ‘Oh, there’s no rehearsal at all; you just turn up on the set, and sometimes you haven’t even met the other actor, or the woman who’s playing your wife, and you’re suddenly in bed with them.’
The great thing about doing a play is you get this rehearsal period, which you don’t get with most film and television roles.
For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs – like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that’s it.
I would be a very sad person if I didn’t have dance in my life. However I can, whatever I do, I just feel a lot of joy. Even if I am sad, if you take me to a rehearsal hall, I will automatically become happy.
I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don’t like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.
Yeah I’m still writing. I’ve got about 14 tracks now. But we’ve been on tour so we haven’t had time to get back to a rehearsal place.
I’ve gotten pretty good with a tray between acting jobs. In fact, when I got the TV show ‘Gravity’ I was still doing my catering work. I told my director I had to miss rehearsal because I had to work a party. He was like, ‘You’re on TV. You need to get over that.’
Back in the Stone Age, before there were workshops, it was a very difficult idea to get into musical theatre. Normally, you would be a chorus girl or boy and write something. People would get their start as rehearsal pianists or dance assistants.
During the rehearsal process I got thrown off the horse.
I think rehearsal can be important if it’s done in a way that works. Often, rehearsal can be a waste of time.
I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop.
For me, rehearsal is very important, and I spend a lot of time doing it. Also, I work with my acting teacher for hours and hours before walking onto any set.
You see everyone’s true colors in a rehearsal.
Casting, to me, is always the same. It’s a very important part of a director’s job. I pick people that I sense I’d like to be in a room with and will enjoy the rehearsal process with because that’s the best part.
Life isn’t a dress rehearsal.
Rehearsal for film is tough. Until the camera’s there, everything changes.
I definitely feel, as a theatre actor, that when you’re rehearsing in your street clothes in a rehearsal room, it can be a little hard to find the character.
I need six weeks of rehearsal and women need nine months and it took me 15 years to figure that out.
Johnny was great in the studio; he was there to make the music that he wanted to make. We lived right beside each other and had a rehearsal studio that was just ours, with nobody else using it, it was part of Johnny’s house, so we could rehearse every day.
The rehearsal process is the most important thing to me, so working with colleagues who are effusive, thoughtful, young and vivacious is really inspiring as a musician.
My mom was like, ‘You talk so much. You have too much energy. Why don’t you just join the play or something?’ It was a comedy, and I got laughs in rehearsal, but onstage, in front of a whole audience, I got a lot of laughs.
At the end of the day, the one commonality that both Hindi cinema and Hollywood share is that they are full of talented and inspirational people. Outside of this, there are many differences, from the scheduling and rehearsal to promotion and directing techniques.
Studios are passe for me. I’d rather play in a garage, in a truck, or a rehearsal hall, a club, or a basement.
In theater, you have a rehearsal period and you know just who to be.
I’m a theater actress. I love rehearsal. I could have six weeks of rehearsal and think it’s not enough. But on film, you don’t get that luxury.
When I was younger, I never wanted to rehearse because I thought that someone would figure out I don’t know what I’m doing. Now I like to really spend the time and figure it out, and rehearsal is to try something that doesn’t work.
I had no interest in filming. I sometimes went to the studios with my dad, but it was slow-going; it was boring to watch. I always ended up in the rehearsal hall watching the dancing. That’s what I liked to do.
I’m someone who started in the theater and really couldn’t stand repeating the show. My favorite part of acting is the five or six weeks of rehearsal that you get. I like doing previews; I like the opening week because my friends and family come, and then after that, I don’t want to do it anymore.
Certainly from the rehearsal process with Elizabeth I think it was very clear. Well let me start again. We were initially supposed to be more combative.
I’m happy whenever I’m in a rehearsal room. I’ve always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.
An orchestra knows during the first two minutes of the first rehearsal whether or not they are going to enjoy the person on the podium.
‘Grease’ was my Broadway debut. That was eye-opening. At the same time, it was very familiar. It was a Broadway show, but it’s kind of the same as doing a show in Minnesota. It’s the same type of rehearsal process. You are doing 8 shows a week, but I worked at a theatre in Minnesota that did 11 shows a week.
I prefer film to the stage. I always like the rehearsal better than I like performing.
My dad taught me to play bass. He’s a bass player; he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him, and whoever didn’t show up for rehearsal that day, I would take their spot.
You never learn to act in front of a camera. You never learn anything in front of a camera. But you learn to act in a rehearsal room with a good play and a good cast and a good director.
I wake up. If I have a rehearsal, I go do that, and when I come back to the hotel, I sit down and turn on the laptop, ’cause I’ve got nothing to do without that!
The excitement of being in a rehearsal room is good for me.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it’s much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
Film is a much lonelier process than theatre. You really don’t have any rehearsal time in film. You don’t shape it together… with theatre, there is a complete kind of family atmosphere. The sociable side of this business is the theatrical side, it really isn’t the film side.
When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn’t a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it’s best if everything is written in the score.
Sometimes it takes me six months before I find out what a line means, even if the writing is superficial… To do a play right, really, I’d like to take two years of rehearsal. You study the character by living with him.
